CE 3K Reports from Portugal

 Part of the chapter from Contact! on Portugues CE3K reports

https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/terry-hooper/encounters-with-extra-terrestrial-entities/paperback/product-qwy7p8.html?page=1&pageSize=4

_______________________________________________________________________

 

   Bordering Spain and with a population of over 9,808,000 and covering more than 92,000 square kilometres including the Azores and Madeira, you might consider this European country to have produced a good number of UFO reports and CE3K cases. Sadly, although we know of some the problem has always been to get translations of these into English and distribute these more widely –it was why I began publishing the AOP Journal again in 2018.

   There have been some reports that have filtered through from Spanish investigators and the main ones all comes with an explanation other than genuine.  The problem is that some Spanish Ufologists seem to set out with less than open minds and I for one find it hard to accept “I heard it was a hoax” or “negative to discard, indicating as reference to a commonplace explanation” without some actual back-up data on why. We need to understand why a case needs to be discarded as much as we do why another seems to be genuine.

   I have also been told that there might be “some friction” between Portuguese and Spanish Ufologists so to get reports first hand from Portuguese investigators is important.  What follows are the paltry few reports I have found and that were published in the English language.

   In a 1983 listing of “negative humanoid cases of the Iberic Peninsula”, Spanish Ufologist Luis R. Gonzales Manso noted that the May, 1947, case in Castelo Viegas, Portugal, was “a negative to discard, indicating as reference to a commonplace explanation” but what the case involved or why it was considered a negative case I have no idea.

   At 15:00 hours on the 5^th May, 1954 at Fregim Amarante, a young boy was on a hill near the village tending his goat when he heard a whistling sound coming from a nearby hollow and ran to see what was causing it. On reaching the hollow he saw one dome-shaped object leaving the area headed towards a nearby river while a second rested on the ground. Both objects were a metallic colour, dome-shaped and had a metal ring on the bottom and a transparent section on top from which came a brown conical protrusion.

   As the first object left the boy had felt a wave of heat and inside the second object he could see two beings with large heads and large, wide apart eyes; both appeared to have ‘antennae’ on top of their heads and their mouths looked like round holes. They were wearing metallic blue outfits and appeared seated with one of them operating levers while the other looked out at the witness.

   Ground traces were later found at the site and to date I have found no details of how the sighting ended and I assume that this second object also took off.  Source: Ballester Olmos & Peri, Enciclopedia de Los Encuentros Cercanos con Ovnis.

   The reference for this next report is almost lengthier than the details of the report -A Descriptive Study of the Entities Associated With Type 1 Sightings, Vallee, J., Flying Saucer Review Vol. 10  no. 1, Jan.-Feb., 1964: p. 7:

   On the 24^th September, 1954, at Sierra Gardunha, two “aluminium men”, 2.50 metres in height were seen.  The entities made gestures inviting the witnesses to get into their craft. The offer was declined.

   That is it.  Vallee does what Vallee often does and gives no reference source like any credible researcher would and, of course, FSR does what FSR usually did and that was not really bother with that sort of thing: a serious publication would have insisted on references.

   On 27^th or 28^th September, 1954, the major newspaper Diario de Lisboa, of Lisbon, Portugal, published a reader's letter and/or an article based on it. Details are that ‘good’. The author claimed to be Cesar Cardoso and to have been driving in the Gardunha hills, near Almadesa, in the Castelo Branco region when his car engine stalled and he could hear a buzzing sound. Cardoso pulled up on the roadside and tried to re-start the engine but all he got were ridiculous noises and so he got out of the car to open the hood and check the engine.  The buzzing sound now became louder and looking up he saw a flying saucer or a sphere - depending on the newspapers apparently - which he was said gave off multi-coloured flashes and then landed without noise on a hilltop some 200 metres below his location.

   Cardoso specified that only the "poles" of the sphere were rotating and that the transparent equatorial part let him see moving shades inside: two silhouettes or men of approximately 2-2.5 metres in height then came out of the object. They looked like, according to the report, “aluminum men”, which I assume means that they were wearing all covering silver clothing. These entities then picked up grasses, flowers and brushes and collected stones which they put in a shining box.

   It was then that the entities saw Cardoso as well as three other people who had also been watching the display and began to approach them – emitting some sounds the witnesses did not comprehend before they then invited the people, by gestures, to go aboard the object; this offer was declined and the entities did not insist.  Both returned to the object and boarded it: the object then took off vertically and flew off producing a shower of sparks.

   The Diario de Lisboa apparently did not take the story at face value and quickly found out that the story had been made up by one Francisco Antonio Fereira who was actually the real Cesar Cardoso's nephew. He admitted the hoax in an interview which was published in the newspaper Diaro de Lisboa for 1^st October, 1954. The youngster apparently explained that he was a flying saucer buff who wanted to get the Press to pay attention to the flying saucer issue and also to… pay attention to the sorry state of the road in his remote village.

  The initial hoax story has been repeated internationally, ignoring the whole hoax part and so the report entered UFO books, the first time in Harold T. Wilkins’ book Flying Saucers Uncensored (p. 55) where the less than credible Wilkins expressed much scepticism on the story which says a lot.  Oh, but Wilkins did stick to form by giving two different dates for the report! From there it was picked up by Jacques Vallée for his "Magonia" catalogue, citing Wilkins as the source but omitting the negative feeling this author had about the story. Vallee said it was a genuine case by inference so other authors picked up on it –some adding various inaccuracies in entity size as well as the date: not one mentioned the suspicion or confession of a hoax.  The report is still widely used today.

   On the 13^th October, 1954, at Casteli Branco, two witnesses observed two entities in shiny clothing emerge from an (not described) landed object and gather flowers, shrubs and twigs.  The entities then re-entered the object which took off.

   The source for the above is The Humanoids, Neville Spearman, 1969: p. 44, edited by Charles Bowen gives no further detail. Not surprising since it is clear FSR did its usual bad research (if any) and did not notice Casteli Branco should have read Castelo Branco and that this was merely a repeat of the Cardoso report.

   We read of the encounter of Vitorino Laurenco Monteiro in The Humanoids (p. 31) and More on the Azores Landing, Gordon W. Creighton, FSR 27/6, June, 1982: pp. 11-12, 20 wherein we finally learn (this was noted in Vallee’s 1964 article) that the original account was in the 21^st November, 1954 edition of Ocorrencia.

   On the 21^st November, 1954, at Santa Maria Airport on the Azores Island, Vitorino Laurenco Monteiro was on duty as a security guard when he saw a bright yellow light travelling at a moderate speed over the south of the Island. As he watched, the object changed course and landed close by. Monteiro described the object as being bluish in colour, elliptical, 3 metres long and 1.5 metres high.  An opening appeared and Menteiro saw an entity emerge at which point he turned on an external light to get a clearer view. 

   The entity was described as appearing to be humanoid, of normal height and seemed to be –or look— around 35 years old and with fair hair and a slight beard but no moustache. Clothing was a dark yellow coverall with dark belt and long yellow boots with zippers at the side. When the entity reached Monteiro he shook the guard’s hand and gave him a couple of back-slaps and spoke, however, he could not be understood and so he returned to the object which then took off with a slight hum.

   It is said that there were witnesses to the UFO itself but not the entity.

   Carlos Sabine’s encounter was reported in Diario de Noticias of 12^th June, 1960 and then in Magonia no. 2, Winter 1979/1980.

   At around 03:30 hours on the 10^th June, 1960, at Algoz, on the Algarve, tailor Carlos Sabine was out walking his dog when he saw an object that he thought was a car.  Sabine then saw it more clearly and it was in fact a disc shaped object giving off unusually bright light and he decided to quickly hide.  From cover he watched six human-like entities move around the object for a while before re-entering the object which rose up at great speed.

   Deciding to flee the area, Sabine ran but the object re-appeared and illuminated the ground with an intense beam of light before leaving again.  Sabine’s dog had run off in terror and as for the witness: neighbours testified to his trustworthiness but they also testified to his state of terror that morning.

   It seems that nothing else is recorded until the 3^rd January, 1977, at Carapito, Beira Alta. References for this case are bulletin Insolito, CEAFI (Centro de Estudos Astronomicos e Fenómenos Insolitos), Portugal, Volume IV, no. 33, pp 14-17 and 26, June-July 1978 & Enciclopedia De Los Encuentros Cercanos Con Ovnis, by Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Fernandez Peris, Plaza y Janés publishers, Spain, 1987.

   At around 21:30 hours a 24-year-old woman and her young sister were doing the washing next to their rural home when they saw a strange bulky figure, dark and motionless on top of a nearby hill which they said resembled an 8-foot-tall box with a round head on top and legs that appeared to thin out towards the bottom.

   There was a strange sound “resembling several dogs barking into a microphone” which seemed to emanate from the figure. The witnesses became frightened and ran to the house and locked themselves in the house; they then heard a sound as if someone was moving around outside on the sand path that encircled the house.

The sound then appeared to stop at the edge of a nearby pine grove.

   This affected the older witness to the point that she suffered a nervous breakdown. Ground traces were found as well as a small radioactive spot was found at the foot of the hill.

   There is a very interesting follow-up to this report by CEAFI in Insolito for June-July, 1978 that is said to take up several pages but apart from a couple of dubious online sources I can find nothing published in the English language.

   At around 00:30 hours, on the 4^th January, 1977, in Carapito, Guarda, Beira Alta, four hours after the sighting by the two sisters, a technician in an auto plant –in the report identified as C.A.C.M., was training his German shepherd dog in an area of pine trees when it began to behave oddly, remaining close to him.

   C.A.C.M. then noticed an object hovering some 10 meters from him and some 10 meters above the ground; it was a dark, metallic, ellipsoid shape with a dark dome-like protuberance. The diameter was approximately 6 to 7 metres and it made a noise similar to "radio static" or a "bip bip" tone.

   Standing close to this object the witness saw a humanoid silhouette that stood around 1.80 or 2 metres tall.  The object suddenly emitted a silvery “lighting flash” and then disappeared, as did the bulky figure.

   We have no way of knowing, until a translated version of the report is published (if ever), whether there was any reason to suspect missing time is involved. After the sighting, C.A.C.M. suffered from severe headaches and his dog “died with no obvious cause of death eight months later”.  I think that we can dismiss the sudden (?) death of the dog eight months after the event: I have owned cats and dogs and other animals since I was young and there does not have to be any obvious reason why one dies –and I assume no post mortem was carried out to find a possible cause.

   I can only hope that there was a full investigation of the incidents of the 3^rd and 4^th as well as a search for other reported UFO activity that day to back up events, especially since other than normal background radiation readings anything higher would have to be a normally unexplained anomaly.